A man was taken into custody on Monday on suspicion of intentionally starting one of three wildfires that tore through areas north and west of Spokane, Washington, officials said. The suspect, 37-year-old Spokane resident Aaron Farinacci, was jailed on a $1 million bond and faces a charge of first-degree arson, according to Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels.
Authorities allege Farinacci ignited the Old Trails Fire by using matches or a lighter to set a roadside patch of grass ablaze on Saturday, Nowels said at a Monday evening news conference. Investigators continue to examine how the two other fires began, and their origins remain under investigation.
The three Spokane-area fires have together been designated the top firefighting priority in the United States. Dozens of major wildfires have been burning across the drought-parched Pacific Northwest for weeks, producing thick smoke and soot that have degraded air quality in the region.
At the local level, the Spokane-area blazes have blackened in excess of 10,000 acres on the northern fringe of the city, which has a population of about 230,000. Officials said at least 700 structures have gone up in flames since Saturday, mostly in residential areas, with another 400, including homes, damaged or destroyed, Benjamin Cossel of the incident command center said.
Evacuation orders surged as the fires expanded. On Monday some 64,000 people were under orders to evacuate, up from roughly 4,000 a day earlier. While no deaths had been reported as of Monday, Cossel warned there was a high probability that fatality counts could rise as flames moved from wooded areas into neighborhoods and commercial zones and search-and-recovery efforts reached areas that are currently inaccessible.
Sheriff Nowels described the investigative timeline: Farinacci was initially detained on Saturday after a witness reported seeing a nervous-looking man bending near the grass at the location where investigators later concluded the Old Trails Fire began. He was questioned and released that day, but was taken back into custody on Monday afternoon after investigators obtained additional evidence, the sheriff said.
Prosecuting attorney Preston McCollam told reporters a formal case had been filed and that Farinacci was expected to make his first court appearance on Tuesday. It was not immediately known whether he had obtained legal representation. Nowels said the suspect told investigators under questioning that they "didn’t know the whole story." Officials also noted Farinacci had a prior manslaughter conviction from an unrelated case in Arizona, but provided no further details.
The human toll and the scale of destruction are reflected in individual stories of sudden loss and urgent escape. Kami Fehlig, 58, was among hundreds who fled their homes as wind-driven flames raced through neighborhoods over the weekend. Picking through the charred remains of her house on Monday, Fehlig described how she, her husband and their two adult daughters climbed into their cars with their dog and a handful of belongings - a wedding album, pet supplies and baby books - and drove away as power failed and the fire approached.
"It was, 'Go now, go now,'" Fehlig said.
Resource deployment on the ground has been substantial but strained by the broader national picture. About 1,100 firefighters were engaged on the Spokane blazes on Monday, Cossel said, representing a portion of the more than 29,200 firefighters fighting wildfires nationwide, concentrated mainly in Oregon, Washington state and Idaho, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise reported.
The interagency center noted more than 100 large new wildfires were reported on Sunday across 15 states, with the majority located in the Northwest. In neighboring Canada, fires continued to rage across British Columbia, where officials described record drought conditions and "explosive" fire behavior.
Fire crews in Spokane were preparing to take advantage of cooler, calmer weather expected through Tuesday before forecasts called for a return of hot, dry winds later in the week, Cossel said. The Interagency Fire Center has recorded 44,722 wildfires nationwide this year - the highest number at this point in the year in at least a decade - with nearly 5.2 million acres burned, the largest January-through-August acreage since 2022.
Scientists cited by officials link the prolonged heat and drought conditions that are fueling wildfire growth in North America, Europe and other regions to manmade global warming, attributing much of the change to the use of fossil fuels. Those environmental conditions are part of the backdrop to the emergency response and the unfolding recovery challenges in and around Spokane.
Operational and recovery outlook
Incident commanders said search and recovery will expand into currently inaccessible areas as conditions permit, and that the probability of discovering fatalities may increase as crews gain access to affected neighborhoods. Officials emphasized that containment and recovery work depend in part on weather patterns and the availability of firefighting resources already stretched by dozens of large active fires across the western United States.
Local authorities continue to investigate the precise causes of the two other fires that erupted the same weekend as the Old Trails Fire. As that work proceeds, prosecutors have moved forward with charges in the case tied to the ignition point investigators attribute to Farinacci.
This developing incident has generated widespread displacement, major property destruction and a concentrated emergency response centered on protecting people and critical infrastructure as the region deals with both immediate firefighting demands and the beginning stages of damage assessment and recovery.